A key instructional goal of English language arts instruction is teaching students to read and interpret complex literary texts. This report reviews the literature on the development and pedagogy of literary analysis skills. It analyzes literary analysis skills as a "key practice," a bundle of disciplinary skills and strategies that form…

A fresh look at the reader response theory to enhance student comprehension through meaningful interactions with literature, this paper explores the instructional implications of a reader response approach in secondary classrooms and examines its role in fostering students' critical reading and thinking skills. The approach promotes transaction…

In our essay we discuss Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of a reading event. Second, we summarize Carole Cox and Joyce Many who applied the transactional theory and designed a 1-5 point continuum to stories and films. Third, we summarize film theorists David Bordwell's constructivism; Richard Wollheim's central imagining and…

There is something very democratic and creative about reader-response criticism. In a reader-response classroom, students progress from passive to active reading, from discovering a text to creating one. Also, students progress from passive to active reading, from discovering a text to creating one. However, a problem emerges when the spirit and…

Freire told his audience at a seminar at the University of Massachusetts, "You need to read knee-deep in texts, for deeper than surface meanings, and you need to know the words to be able to do it" (quoted in Cleary, 2003). In a children's literature class, fifteen teachers and I traveled along a path that moved us toward reading…

In this article, the author redefines "text" and "poem" so that attention will be focused on the reader. The text, she argues, lies inert on the page until the reader comes along and brings it to life in the act of reading, reacting, and reflecting. A poem, then, must be thought of as an event in time. It is not an object or an ideal entity. It is…

Recently, transactional reader response theory has been criticized for providing an inadequate theoretical guide for the study of multicultural literature. Some scholars argue that Rosenblatt assumes the reader and her response to literature are ideologically innocent and the continuum of aesthetic and efferent stance does not encompass critical…

Argues that the most common use of reader-response theory in the classroom is misguided in its emphasis on personal response and identification. Discusses the social and political nature of readers, texts, and contexts. Suggests that when a text is about characters whose life and culture are very different from the reader's, it can heighten the…

In an effort to both challenge and engage adolescent students deemed to be academically "at risk," the purpose of this study was to examine the possibility of creating a pedagogical bridge between dominant (school sanctioned) and non-dominant (non-school) forms of literacy. The study was conducted within a setting where high school students were…

Despite the fact that students are an important component of the educational process, their preferences for instruction are not typically a consideration for classroom practices. The purpose of this survey study was to determine high school students' preferences for methods used in the instruction of literary works of art. Students expressed…

Describes how a high school English teacher's belief that text contains a single, unchanging meaning evolved to an understanding that students create their own meanings through their own experiences. Discusses ways he tried (with mixed success) to provide students with the opportunity to bring their own experience to their reading. (SR)

Describes a modified method of reader-response used as a core activity in a literature classroom in which students write a short written response at the beginning of every class to the reading due that day. Describes the procedure, its relationship to effective writing, and its benefits, including reading more critically, writing more effectively,…

Discusses the Facts and Feelings Response Diary strategy for assisting middle school students in inclusive settings to connect both efferently and aesthetically with informational text. Notes that this activity stimulates students to focus their attention on important facts and details and to use their prior experiences, feelings, interests,…

In her literature and composition classes, an educator encourages students to correlate their memory and imagination to the rhetorical elements of logos, pathos, and ethos and construct regenerative structures of knowledge through a comprehensive and objective understanding of a contextualized problem. She employs Bakhtin's dialogic method of…

Taking off from the perception that the current critical climate blurs most meaningful distinctions between fiction and nonfiction, this book examines what happens when writers and readers encounter texts presented as nonfiction--texts that make some truth claim on outside experience, texts whose characters and events have at least some tangible…